


they do it with smoke and mirrors

by Lirazel



Category: Infinite (Band), K-POP RPF, K-pop, Korean Pop, Kpop-Fandom
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 17:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The on-off switch got stuck a long time ago, and it doesn’t work anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they do it with smoke and mirrors

Sometimes Woohyun thinks he hates( _ ~~loves~~_ ) Sunggyu so much that he doesn’t know how he has the emotional energy to do or feel anything else. He feels like he’s made of that hate( _ ~~love~~_ ), like all of the atoms in his body have been replaced by hating( _ ~~loving~~_ )-Sunggyu and nothing else of who he was before is left.

\--

“Now I trust you the most of anyone,” Sunggyu had said, but the cameras were rolling and the scriptwriter noonas were hovering in the shadows and Woohyun had smiled and pretended like hearing that hadn’t just sliced him to shreds ( _the screenwriter noonas are the cruelest people in the world, and they don’t even know it. Or maybe they do, and that makes everything worse_ ).

In his dreams, he hears: “I didn’t like you at first.” Over and over and over again.

( _That’s a lie. He hears “I don’t like you” over and over and over again_.)

\--

Sunggyu wasn’t lying, exactly. (He’s a bad liar, and Woohyun would know.)

Sunggyu does trust him to keep practices going when he can’t ( _when he can’t keep his contempt for the music they’re singing contained_ ) and to always give the interviewers the right ( _smarmy_ ) answers, to pick up the thread of conversation when Sunggyu’s tongue trips him up ( _Sunggyu is probably one of the least eloquent people to ever be made leader of an idol group, and Woohyun thinks of his own tongue so often described as silver, and his laugh is bitter_ ), to smooth over Hoya’s inappropriate comments ( _on the rare occasions when Hoya’s allowed to say anything when cameras are around_ ) or talk the energy back down after one of Sungyeol’s choding moments ( _Woohyun sometimes envies Sungyeol more than anyone: what must it be like to be that careless even when the cameras are rolling?_ ): the whole right hand/co-leader/second-in-command thing is ( _almost_ ) true.

Sunggyu trusts Woohyun to care about Infinite when he can’t, and Woohyun has never let him down.

( _Woohyun isn’t a naturally greasy person; he’s learned that as he goes, and maybe it terrifies him more than anything to discover how good at it he is. But he doesn’t think even the other members know that he really does care about Infinite as much as he says he does. More, even. So much he can’t pin a simple word like ‘love’ to it: he cares about it so much that he hollows himself out for it, twists and turns and molds himself into what it needs him to be, carves his body into the shape that will serve it best, starves himself and works himself to exhaustion and forgoes sleep and sings his throat raw, and he does it all for Infinite._

 _The name, at least if you ask Woohyun, is fitting._ )

\--

Another interview, and Sunggyu says: “He is also a friend who works really hard. As a member in the same group as him, I’m proud and I think that he’s cool. Woohyun thinks the most before a broadcast and works hard to get ready….Unexpectedly, he’s a considerate friend who does a lot of sacrifices for the team.”

( _The ‘unexpectedly’ is the only thing Woohyun hears._ )

\--

He hears Sungyeol’s voice one night. Woohyun has climbed down from his bunk ( _he and Sunggyu used to sleep side-by-side on the floor, bumping into each other in the night, but that feels like a lifetime ago now, they’ve gone so far beyond that place_ ) and is headed to the kitchen to get something to drink, but he pauses after opening the door only a crack. ( _He read once that everyone on earth is most sensitized to the sound of their own name, that they can hear it spoken from a further distance and a quieter volumes than any other word. Everyone on earth, Woohyun had read, but sometimes he feels like he’s the only one who’s always listening for the sound of his name and that when he hears it, it can burn right through his skin._ )

“Woohyun and Sungjong are the only ones who really want to be here, doing this,” Sungyeol says, and there’s an edge to his voice that lets Woohyun know that he’s talking to Myungsoo—Sungyeol doesn’t show that sharp side of himself to anyone else ( _Woohyun’s pretty sure that Myungsoo is the only one who takes Sungyeol seriously, that there’s some part of Sungyeol that only Myungsoo is capable of seeing, and if Woohyun didn’t have so many other things to think about, he’d probably wonder what it is_ ). “Dongwoo and Hoya just want to dance, and you don’t even know what you want.”

Myungsoo snorts softly, but it’s not a noise of disagreement. Sungyeol doesn’t even have to voice what Sunggyu wants, because they all know, and they all know that Infinite isn’t it. Everyone in the world knows that ( _everyone who even knows who Infinite is, and that isn’t very many people, really, in the grand scheme of things_ ).

“Do you think it’s what Woohyun wants?” Myungsoo asks. His voice is quiet, and Woohyun almost misses the question.

“What do you think he wants?” If Sungyeol had asked anyone else that question, it would be a tad bit patronizing ( _Sungyeol is the smartest of them all, despite his choding image, and all the members know it—he makes sure, and Woohyun can’t blame him_ ), but this is Myungsoo, and so Sungyeol sounds like he really wants to know.

There’s silence while Myungsoo ponders the question. “To be adored?” he offers finally, and it’s exactly what Woohyun had known he would say ( _that doesn’t mean it doesn’t tighten his chest till he can’t breathe when he hears it_ ).

“Well, that’s what being an idol is, isn’t it?” Sungyeol’s voice is only the slightest bit bitter ( _and a lot ironic_ ).

“Is it?” Myungsoo asks mildly.

Woohyun shuts the door and climbs back into bed and stares at the ceiling so long that his eyes are achy and gritty the next morning.

\--

On stage, in front of the cameras, for the fans, Sunggyu stands close beside him, so close that their hips bump again and again and Woohyun can smell the scent of his hairspray. 

( _Off stage, when the cameras are kept behind a cordon, when the fans go home, Sunggyu shrugs Woohyun’s arm off of his shoulder and turns his back._ )

On stage, in front of the cameras, for the fans, Sunggyu smiles his eye-smile that the fangirls love, and he smiles it for Woohyun. 

( _After filming, when the flashbulbs fade away, when the fans are left behind, Sunggyu doesn’t meet Woohyun’s eyes when he talks to him._ ) 

On stage, in front of the cameras, for the fans, Sunggyu and Woohyun go together like chopsticks and a spoon, like a needle and thread, like a kite and a string.

( _In the little slices of real life they have left, the privacy of their dorms, the texts the members send to each other, Woohyun is as close to irrelevant to Sunggyu as it’s possible to be._ ) 

\--

The MC says something fawning about L’s face ( _of course_ ), and Myungsoo smiles politely and ducks his head just a little, and Woohyun wants to scream: _How do you do it?_ But despite his charming smile, Myungsoo’s eyes are distant and closed-off, like he’s completely apart from the harsh studio lights and the thick layer of makeup on his face ( _the bb cream itches Woohyun, makes him want to scratch his skin right off his face, but he never complains, just winks at the stylist noona and makes her laugh_ ), and Woohyun can never tell if that’s Myungsoo compartmentalizing or if it’s just more of the L concept ( _either way, Woohyun envies him_ ).

But Myungsoo always looks tired after interviews.

\--

Woohyun thinks Sunggyu is kind of ugly. He’s always thought so ( _he even said so at the beginning, that Sunggyu didn’t have the face and body to be an idol, and, yeah, that might be part of why Sunggyu didn’t like him at first_ ). 

( _Woohyun thinks Sunggyu is kind of ugly, but that doesn’t explain why Woohyun’s eyes always seem to find Sunggyu’s face._ )

Nicole says that Woohyun is gorgeous. She says that Myungsoo is flawless, that Hoya is handsome, that Sungjong is beautiful. She says that Sungyeol is cute the way a guy in your chem. class is cute and that Dongwoo is hot precisely because his face is so interesting—and also because of the way he moves. Woohyun always listens when Nicole talks. They’re sprawled out on the bed in Key’s hotel room in Singapore, and Mir and Jinwoon are playing video games and insulting each other, and Key is texting furiously from where he’s draped himself over an armchair, bare feet dangling over the arm and a soju bottle cradled in the crook of his elbow ( _Key looks so small when he’s not performing. It makes Woohyun feel strangely protective, which is_ ridiculous _because it’s_ Key). 

“What about Sunggyu?” Woohyun demands. “I still don’t know how he ever became an idol. He looks like a puppet in a kid’s TV show.”

Nicole shrugs. “A lot of girls find talent really attractive. He grows on you.”

( _Woohyun stomps over to Key and grabs the soju bottle._ )

\--

Woohyun watches the rough-cut of the dancing for “The Chaser” video and grits his teeth.

Sungyeol has never been good at the tight choreography Infinite is known for—he has an easier time learning the moves than Myungsoo, he makes fewer mistakes than Sungjong, but either he can’t make his lanky limbs move with anything but that looseness or else he just doesn’t care ( _Woohyun thinks it’s a toss-up on any given day which it is, but what does he really know about Sungyeol?_ ). The director had told him to strut in that opening shot, but that doesn’t look like a strut to Woohyun ( _Woohyun knows how to strut_ ). Sungyeol’s moves don’t snap, his eyes don’t smolder, and Woohyun can’t help but think that Sungyeol looks like he’s over the whole idol thing.

Woohyun chews Sungyeol out for it, hating the sound of his own voice even as he does it, the shrillness, the whining edge. Sungyeol rolls his eyes and turns away, and Woohyun can’t stop screeching at him.

\--

Woohyun can’t watch Sunggyu sing “Because.” When Sungyeol notices ( _Sungyeol notices all the things he shouldn’t and is oblivious about all the things he should pay attention to, and it’s one of the things Woohyun hates most about him_ ), Woohyun explains that it’s because Sunggyu looks ridiculous. 

“Is he really trying to convince anyone that he’s hot and badass? He looks like an idiot in those clothes—he can’t pull them off. It’s embarrassing.”

Woohyun has to turn away from Sungyeol’s skeptical eyes, and he catches a glimpse of the monitor where a tiny Sunggyu is slinking around the stage.

( _Woohyun lays in bed at night and the way that Sunggyu’s hands slide over the microphone stand is projected against the back of his eyelids like a movie on an endless reel of film_.)

\--

Dongwoo’s laughing again, and the sound is ridiculous and wonderful all at the same time, like Dongwoo can’t keep his joy tamped down inside him: it has to escape. 

( _Woohyun loves Dongwoo more than almost any of the other members, because you can’t help but love Dongwoo, but sometimes he kind of hates Dongwoo when he laughs_ ).

When they were trainees and Woohyun would walk into a room where Dongwoo was laughing, Woohyun would ask what the joke was. But he stopped asking long ago, because one of the first things he learned about Dongwoo—besides that he can dance like he was born to do it, he writes all his own raps, and he laughs more than any other person Woohyun has ever met—was that Dongwoo doesn’t need a _reason_ to laugh. Sometimes Hoya or Sunggyu would try to explain what it was that had set Dongwoo off, but more often than not, the others would just shake their heads as if to say, ‘It’s Dongwoo. Why are you even asking?’

Dongwoo had shattered all the awkwardness of the beginning with his laughter ( _the sound of his mirth sanded down the edges of competition and contempt for the less-talented_ ), and between his friendliness and Sunggyu’s work ethic, they constructed Infinite. And every day, they construct it again. 

There are times when personalities clash, when tempers flare so bright, when exhaustion turns formerly-innocuous comments cruel, and the only thing that keeps everything from explodingimplodingcollapsingshatteringsinking is the sound of Dongwoo’s laughter.

( _Woohyun can’t remember the last time he laughed without a little part of him thinking about how he’d appear to onlookers. He’s performing even when the door closes and the cameras and fans are finally shut out. ~~The on-off switch got stuck a long time ago, and it doesn’t work anymore~~_.)

\--

Sunggyu doesn’t snore, but Woohyun wishes that he did. It would give him an excuse to be angry, a reasonable one, because it makes absolutely no sense that listening to the quiet in-and-out of Sunggyu’s breathing at night can make him this furious.

\--

Sungjong is the best of all of them at being an idol, Woohyun thinks. He’s always been good at his job, and at first it was straightforward enough: be adorable and do girl group dances. That wasn’t any hardship for Sungjong, because he knew precisely how cute he was and he loved those girl group dances just as much as he was good at them.

Sungjong’s grown out of that now, and he’s easing his concept into growing up, too. Now he’s the fierce one, still a diva, but in a way that makes it clear that he’s left lemon candy far behind: now he knows exactly how beautiful he is, and he wants everyone to know that he could eat anyone who gets in his way alive. The members aren’t kidding when they say he’s scary when he’s angry ( _‘Don’t make the maknae mad’ has become one of the rules they operate by, and Sungjong just smirks_ ).

“And, as usual, Sungjongie is the only one of you who made it through that with anything like dignity,” Hyoan-hyung says with a grin as the members troop off the stage after another variety show filming. 

Sungjong used to smile and aegyo for the crowds, offering up big puppy dog eyes and sassy innocence. Now he sits there with his legs crossed and his face unimpressed, flipping that fall of dark hair out of his rolling eyes while watching his hyungs make fools of themselves.

( _Sungjong’s changing his concept and everyone seems to be going with it. Sometimes Woohyun bosses the maknae around more than he really needs to._ )

\--

Most of the time, Sunggyu sits up front in the van by whichever one of the manager-hyungs is driving. When Dongwoo has a headache or when Sungjong wants to call his brother on the drive, Sunggyu will surrender his seat and climb in the back instead. He always manages to arrange things so that Woohyun never ends up sitting by him, all without seeming to arrange things at all ( _not that Woohyun would want to sit by him anyway. Idiot_ ).

When Sunggyu and Woohyun have vocal practice scheduled at the same time, Sunggyu invites one of the maknae line along, insisting that Sungyeol really needs to buckle down and focus or that Sungjong should take this time to figure out what he’s capable of now that his voice has changed for good ( _not that Woohyun’s been looking forward to the two of them in the studio, the way their voices blend even more perfectly when there aren’t any other singers contributing_ ). 

Sunggyu doesn’t shut up for three whole days after they move into the new dorm, raving about how great it is to have a real bed ( _Woohyun hates the bunk beds_ ).

( _And they call Woohyun manipulative._ )

\--

Hoya is strangely relaxing to be around. He can get just as worked up as the others, of course, and his sense of humor is anything but idol-appropriate, but he isn’t nosy like Sungjong or annoying like Sungyeol or just too much like Dongwoo sometimes is, but he’s also actually _there_ all the time, unlike Myungsoo, who still sometimes creeps Woohyun out with how he can zone out. Hoya’s the best to be around when you want to just hang out and not have to think about anything at all, especially when you’re in a foul mood and you want to be around someone who won’t press you for an explanation.

Woohyun watches TV with Hoya and plays videogames with Hoya and listens to hip-hop he doesn’t even really care for with Hoya. And sometimes he goes to the practice room with Hoya and dances and dances and dances until his limbs feel like ramyun and his mind goes blissfully static-y, a TV without a signal.

Woohyun collapses onto the floor and lays there staring at the spidery cracks in the ceiling and feeling the sweat itch its way across his skin. Hoya tosses him a water bottle and grins. “It’s good, right?”

It is.

\--

Sunggyu opens his mouth too wide when he sings, over-enunciates, looks like he’s lip-synching when he isn’t ( _lip-synching? Sunggyu? Never. Even in music videos he’s singing every note_ ), but it isn’t for show: that’s how he sang even before Woollim. Sunggyu was in a rock band before Infinite and even the snobbiest music aficionado wouldn’t look down on his iTunes collection and Tablo had once said that he was pretty sure Sunggyu would go far. Sunggyu has a lisp that girls find adorable and he never flashes his midriff for the cameras because he doesn’t have a six pack ( _and no one cares_ ) and people take what he says seriously. When Sunggyu gives a compliment you know he means it, and when you aren’t good enough he tells you and then moves on. Sunggyu is the leader. 

( _Sunggyu is everything that Woohyun is not, and Woohyun wishes he didn’t love him so much because of it._ )

\--

Myungsoo tilts his head, and Woohyun feels that unreadable gaze examining him for a moment as they all walk back to the van, half in stage-costume and half in street-dress, makeup smeared and hair ruffled.

“You okay, hyung?” Myungsoo asks. ( _“I’m not ‘hyung,’” Woohyun thinks. “I’m the little brother.” But Boohyun isn’t here and Dongwoo acts more like a little kid sometimes than even Sungyeol and Sunggyu is less ‘hyung’ than he is ‘dad.’_ )

“I’m great,” Woohyun says, and he smiles and makes sure that it’s bright, even if it isn’t for-the-fans bright ( _though there may be some behind that bush—he should try harder just in case_ ).

Myungsoo just looks at him a moment longer, then shrugs and climbs into the van.

Woohyun catches Sunggyu’s eyes ( _accidentally_ ) in the rearview as he takes his seat, and Sunggyu looks away immediately.

Woohyun keeps the smile on his face.


End file.
